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From Taneya: I’ve created an account on the blog for Jihad now so he can be a guest author. Below is his first post.

I am reading a book called Ninth Ward. It is about a girl named Lanesha who has a grandma named MaMa Ya-Ya. Well Lanesha is a 12-year old girl that lives in New Orleans. Lanesha has been seeing ghosts since she was an itty bitty baby. But Lanesha has been having hard times at school because she has been seeing ghosts everywhere at her school. She says they all look sad. MaMA Ya-Ya is a very nice lady who raised Lanesha and took extra care of her.

The reason I am reading this book is because it is educational and tells you how bad Hurricane Katrina was when it hit New Orleans and how it killed a lot of people and flooded homes. I am also reading this book cause when you read it it actually tells you in the book how people were in Hurricane Katrina and died or drowned. My schoolteacher has the whole class reading this book because the author of the book, Jewell Parker Rhodes, is coming to our school, LEAD Academy, tomorrow to read to us and my teacher wants us to be prepared.

The book is great so far because I like how they descibe the ghost in the book cause I always wanted to know how ghost look. I also think about this book so far how Lanesha survies Hurricane Katrina and saves Spot (the dog).

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Last week I finished reading John Grisham’s latest book. I reacted very emotionally to the story; can’t tell you how or it might give it away, but I could hardly put the book down. One night I even stayed up until about 3 in the morning to get through a certain part. Love John Grisham’s stuff – he’s an excellent storyteller. This is the 2nd book I’ve read using my Kindle App on my phone.

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I’m so proud of myself! I just created my first Java applications! Okay – the code was all of one line, but hey – gotta start somewhere right?

This comes about from the fact that I am taking a computer science course this semester that will teach us how to program in Java. The instructor of the course stresses however, that the course is about how to solve problems using computers. The Java language is just the tool we are going to use to solve those problems. Should be quite interesting….

In other news, Miles came in 2nd place in his school spelling bee. Way to go Miles! We also went to Talladega this weekend to visit family and had a good time. Poor Kaleya did not want to leave her cousin – she had a blast playing with him all weekend.

Oh! And I almost forgot to post this — I have been reading the Golden Compass books and just love them! A couple of nights ago I finished the second book in the series, The Subtle Knife, but it will probably be the weekend before I can start the third one, The Amber Spyglass. I find the writing of these books to be quite good and I become so engaged in the storyline. I haven’t seen the Golden Compass movie, and I was wanting to wait until I finished all three books, but I’m afraid that if I wait much longer, I’ll miss it being in the movie theaters. I hope to try and see it over the next couple of weeks.

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Over the holidays, we went to Indiana to visit the boys, then off to North Carolina to visit my family. We had a great trip and Kaleya really enjoyed herself playing with her brothers and her cousins.

Kalonji and I also celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary over the holidays, we were married on New Year’s Eve. I wish I had blogged that long ago so I could go back and revisit the post We were able to sneak away and go to the movies – we saw National Treasure 2 and enjoyed it. Over the holidays we also saw I am Legend and enjoyed that too. I still want to see The Golden Compass, but I’m working my way through the books right now (I’m on the second book, the Subtle Knife) and want to read all three before seeing it. I’d better hurry up though before I miss my opportunity!

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I am amassing quite the library for Kaleya; it started with my boss giving me many books that her daughter has outgrown, plus, my mother is now collecting books on her behalf and sending them to us. My instructions to my mother: pretty, colorful pictures.

Tonight, I read one of the books, The Eleventh Hour by Graeme Base. It was a great read! I saw one of Graeme’s other books at the bookstore a couple of months ago and loved his art. It actually reminded me of another book I used to read when I was younger, about 12 years old, but I can’t remember the name of that book. It too was a mystery book, treasure hunt but it had a real prize buried somewhere and I think it involved bees. I’ve got to find that now!

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I am slowly starting to use LibraryThing. Does anyone else use it? Let me know and I’ll look you up! We have so many books, that it would be cool to use the site more as it lets you see who has the same books you have and you can read reviews, etc. Here is my very short beginning of my book catalog.

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Well, I finished Memoirs of a Geisha tonite. I did not remember the ending, so I was able to enjoy it all over again. Excellent material to stitch a geisha girl by. So, I have decided that I must keep the theme going – so the next book I am going to listen to is Cloud of Sparrows by Takashi Matsuoka. This book is set in the Edo period of Japan and is an action book about a samarai warrior, his geisha love interest and three missionaries. I know absolutely nothing about it but thought I’d give it a try. And, if I decide after finishing this book too, I have another Japanese book ready to go. (will i ever stop working on the geisha???)

Also today I got some goodies in the mail. Yoonhye, one of the ladies whom I host pictures for, sent me several magazines — including an issue of Treasures in Needlework. That was extremely kind of her and I can’t wait to add them to the database. I also got my order in from 123 from which Kathy, another lady whose gallery I host, got me a gift certificate. With the gift certificate, I ordered Goldie & Jewel. I will probably start one of these soon. (I am so bad!)